Respected, Most Reverend, beloved Fathers and fellow-faithful:

Let us give thanks to our Triune God - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - for making us worthy during this most sinful period of time (following the mostly unbridled summer holidays) to congregate once again in this hall and to preach and hear the words pertaining to the eternal life.

We are not worthy enough, to either hear or to preach the word of God; because we preach and hear many things, but apply very few of them. But if we don't preach or don't listen to them, we will become even more unworthy.  The sermon warms both speakers as well as audiences, bringing them into a certain spiritual state.  Let us therefore beseech our merciful God to pity us even more, and grant us His Grace even more, so that we might sense and apply His words even more.

So...you all went to Church this morning....  although, woe betide, if there are people who - on account of certain bad representatives of the Church - have forsaken the Church...  Anyway, you all heard the Gospel excerpt this morning... well, the Gospel is "not of mankind" as the Apostle Paul vociferously stresses;  this Book is not a "human" opus.  Could it ever have been possible for the illiterate, barefoot fishermen to have authored the most beautiful book in the world by themselves? The Gospel is divinely inspired, and it is worth focusing all our attention on it.

What did the Gospel say today during the Divine Liturgy? It narrated one of Christ's miracles. Which miracle?  When Christ cast out of an unfortunate person an entire legion of demons!  Demons !  Yes, demons! And our sermon today is precisely about demons. 

 Our era - my brethren - is par excellence a demonic era. It is the most demonic era, post Christ. People today - especially the young - don't know what they are saying, what they are doing, and what they are seeking. They have adopted all kinds of eccentricities and extremes - from fashions to ideas... they are overtaken by a mania for destruction... by a rabid mania to demolish everything... If they could, they would even climb up to the Sun to extinguish and demolish it because they don't like light, or harmony and beauty... they seem to prefer destruction, chaos and disorder and the dark and every kind of anarchy - from social to spiritual anarchy...

One can clearly see such displays and such phenomena in the  era of our time, which logic can't explain. Man can reach the brink of madness when attempting to interpret these displays by his contemporary people - and even more so by the young generation.

Our demonic era and the demonic upheaval that all of us are subjected to from time to time; also, regarding the hour that will come for darkness to govern; the hour that God  will allow the devil to take over... and also, given that today's Gospel reading spoke of demons - have all given me the reason to pursue the question:  "Do demons really exist?"

After all, we are entering a new, spiritual era and we must therefore become well acquainted with our enemy in order to deal with him more efficiently.

To reply to the question if demons exist, we must first define how or what we mean by the term "demons". What are demons? According to our Faith, demons are PERSONS - PERSONALITIES - evil personalities, but still, personalities. 

What does the term "person" or "personality" imply?  It is an entity that has a mind ("nous"); it is conscious of having an existence and it can state "I exist", "I can do this or that", and also has a will: "I want this"... "I want that"...

There are four kinds of persons:

Firstly, there are three most high Persons: they are the Persons of Divinity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  These are the Personalities with the full meaning of the word.

After the first three most high and divine Persons there exist the Angelic hosts: thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads of them. Angels are also Persons; they have a spirit, a nous (mind); they are conscious of having an existence; and they have a will; they have all the characteristics of a personality.

Apart from the Angels, we humans are also persons, because we have logic, self-awareness, volition, and all the characteristics of a personality.

However, apart from the aforementioned three, demons also are persons. They are not gods; people "make" them gods. Demons are not beginningless - they have a beginning. They are not uncreated - they were created. We do not concur with the theory of the Babylonians, the Persians and the Manichaeans, who used to say from the start there have always existed two beginningless, uncreated principals : the benevolent God and the malevolent God, No! Is Satan a god? Is he beginningless?  Is he uncreated?  No!  He too is a creation of God. Satan and his angels were also benign creations of God, like the other angels, but they fell away from God's Grace and became perverted personalities - and they cannot rest until they have performed evil, until they go contrary to God, to the other, benign angels, and to mankind.

Most people today don't believe that demons exist as personal entities. They believe and claim that demons are figments of people's imagination; that  man has fashioned demons with his imagination, the way he fashions various fairy tales. They claim that demons are the remnants of ancient people's superstitions, when they believed that demons actually existed.  And instead of this detail making people stop and think about how all ancient peoples believed in the existence of demons - instead of making them think seriously that maybe that belief has originated from a more ancient primeval knowledge of mankind - they instead assert nowadays that demons are simply remnants of ancient peoples' superstitions. 

People also assert that demons are personifications of evil... of various evils... and these aren't the things that only people who have nothing to do with religion assert; even theologians assert such things - both those overseas, but also those in our own land unfortunately - that is, that the devil - Satan - the wily one - is nothing more than a personification of evil.  They also ridicule the idea - the notion - of Satan. Whenever they hear a mention of Satan, of the Devil and of demons, they secretly smile, they laugh, they smirk and they make fun of any such mention. Oh, what Satan has succeeded in doing! My brethren, Satan is "sifting" us, the way he had "sifted" Peter... he stirs us deep within our depths, the way that the depths of the oceans are stirred... he humiliates us, he makes fools of us, he makes us go beside ourselves and then comes the hour when we beat ourselves up and wonder furiously "Oh no....how on earth did I do that?!  How is it possible?  I didn't want to do such a thing!"  Yes, brother, you didn't do that thing - Satan did it, who seduced you to.  Thus, while the demonic element is dominating people's lives, people are denying the existence of Satan and they laugh at the idea and the notion of Satan.

Satan's greatest success is that he has made most people believe that he doesn't exist - thus enabling him to do his job unhindered.

Although people have been making fun of the notion of Satan and ridicule it - and also taking into account the variety of visual representations by the Medieval era which portray demons as monstrous human-like beings with horns and tails, usually black in colour, with claws for nails and a savage appearance (I repeat, this is how they have ridiculed the form of Satan) - there are also religious people... faithful people... who actually avoid speaking of Satan... and there are theologians and preachers too, who avoid choosing the subject of Satan for their sermons!

But we, my beloved, are not ashamed to speak of whatever Christ is not ashamed to speak of, and whatever the Prophets and Apostles have spoken of. We consider the topic of Satan a serious one, because we regard Satan as a personal being and most importantly, as man's worst enemy. And we also believe that the existence and the works of Satan are prerequisites for our in-Christ redemption. If Satan didn't exist, there would be no possibility for us sinners to be saved. Why? If we people do have the possibility of being saved, it is because it wasn't us who invented sin; it was because we fell into sin, having been lured into it by Satan.  Satan - who had invented sin - has no hope of being saved, whereas we do have a chance of being saved, because we were catechized by Satan to sin. And if Christ came into the world, He came (as John had said), for the purpose of destroying the works of the Devil. And as Paul tells us, He came, to annul the one who has dominance over Death - that is, the Devil.

How do we prove to people that demons - as personal beings - do actually exist?  For those who say they believe the Holy Bible, we will use the Holy Bible. We will refer them to the Old and the New Testaments. For the others, who don't believe the Holy Bible (or who say they don't believe the Holy Bible), we will refer them somewhere else.

The Holy Bible - mainly the New Testament - is filled with proofs of Satan's existence. Satan makes his appearance as early as the first pages of the Old Testament. In the 3rd chapter of the first Book of the Holy Bible - Genesis - we read about the Serpent, who was the most prudent of all the beasts upon the earth which God had made: "...and the serpent said to the woman: 'Why is it, that God said you must not eat from every tree in Paradise?' And the woman said to the serpent: 'We can eat from the fruits of every tree in Paradise; but from the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of Paradise, God told us 'you must not eat from that, nor must you touch it, lest you die on that very day'. And the serpent said to the woman: 'You won't die by death; for God knew that on the day that you eat from it, your eyes shall be opened and you shall be like gods - knowing good and evil'...

What do you say, my brethren, was it really a serpent conversing with Eve?  A serpent is an animal, a beast - and a beast is not a person. It does not have a mind (a nous), it does not have specific thoughts. Whereas whatever was conversing, did have a nous; it also had thoughts, it had utterance and wilyness, and it had envy and malice - and it also lied AND accused God!

Just like when (many years ago) "someone" had spoken through the mouth of a female donkey - and it was, of course, "someone else" who had actually spoken through the donkey, NOT the donkey itself - similarly, "someone else" had spoken through the mouth of the serpent to Eve. Hiding behind the serpent was the Devil - the envious Devil, who was envious of the bliss that the first-fashioned couple was enjoying in Paradise... the wily, lying and sycophant of God - the Devil.

Balaam and the donkey berating him - Numbers 22:5 - 24:25

All the aforementioned are characteristics of a person. The devil is a personal being and as such is evident from within the very first pages of the Holy Bible. With his reference to this excerpt of the Holy Bible, the Evangelist and Apostle John says this in his Book of Revelations (12:7-9): "And a great war was taking place in heaven for Michael and his Angels to fight against the dragon. And the dragon fought, and his angels, and he did not prevail, nor was a place found for him again in heaven. And the dragon was cast down - that  'great serpent of old', who was called 'Devil' and 'Satan', who misled the entire inhabited world - was cast down to earth, and his angels were cast down together with him."

The Devil envies all of mankind; he especially envied a great man in the Old Testament... Just read the first and the second chapter of the Book of Job.  One day - it says - the Angels of God had come to present themselves before the Throne of God. "And behold: the Devil also arrived along with them. The Lord then said to the Devil: "Where did you come from?" The Devil replied to the Lord, saying: "Having gone around the world and walked here and there upon it, then I came here." To which the Lord said to him: "Did you think with your mind against my child Job, because there is none like him on the earth - a man who is irreproachable, true, reverent, abstaining from every wicked thing?" To which the Devil replied, saying against God: "Is Job revering the Lord for free? Didn't You place a fence around everything that is outside him and all that is inside his home, and whatever is outside around him? You have blessed the work of his hands and have multiplied his herds upon the earth. But... stretch out Your hand and touch everything that he has, after which, he will surely no longer bless You to Your face."  Then the Lord said to Satan: "Behold, everything that is his I give into your hands - but do not touch him", and the Devil departed from the presence of the Lord..

In chapter 2, the Devil brought down fire from the sky, he brought robbers, he caused an earthquake, Job's house was destroyed and all his children were trapped under its ruins and died; his servants were slaughtered and his herds were seized...  Then the Devil presented himself again to the Lord. "Did you observe my friend Job? You said you would destroy all his possessions, and yet Job has remained whole."  And how did that arrogant and brazen one reply?  "A hide for the sake of a hide; and everything that a man has, he acquires for his life!  Above all -he said- is the person's skin (his hide)!  Man will sacrifice everything, in order to save his own hide (=his own life)!  "Will You stretch out Your hand and allow me access to his bones and his flesh?  Then we shall see if he will continue to bless You!"  God then permitted the Devil to inflict various plagues on Job's body, but had to leave job's life intact. So the Devil attacked Job's body with a serious infection from head to toe, making it necessary for Job to scrape away the secretion of those sores with a pottery shard, while seated atop a dung hill outside the city limits.  But Satan was again disgraced, because Job remained unperturbed, to the end of those ordeals....

So now I would ask you, my brethren: Is a being that can speak and can converse with God, express doubt about the integrity of a human, and ask for God's permission to test that certain man - isn't that a person? Most assuredly it is! Quite simply, the Devil is a person...

Book 3 of Reigns ("Kings") - chapter 22 - contains a vision, which was seen by a Prophet named Micaiah:

"¹⁹ Then Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on His right hand and on His left.  And the Lord said, ‘Who will deceive Ahab to go up there, so that he will fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ So one of the prophets spoke in one manner, and another spoke in another manner. ²¹ Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, and said, ‘I will deceive him.’  ²² The Lord  said to him, ‘In what way?’ So he said, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And the Lord said, ‘You shall deceive him, and you shall also prevail. Go out and do so.’ ²³ Therefore look!  The Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has declared disaster against you.”

When a being says "I will go and deceive him"... " I  will go".. it has a self, it is showing it has an awareness of existing, and since it says "I", it cannot be but a personal being. Electricity doesn't say "i"... a wall doesn't say "I"... animals don't say "I".... trees don't say "I".   Satan says "I" because he is a person - a being that is conscious of its existence.

Another vision is contained in the 3rd chapter of the Book of the Prophet Zechariah. There the Lord showed Zechariah a contemporary person of his in the vision: Joshua, who was then the High Priest after the Judeans' return from their Babylonian Captivity. In that vision, the Lord showed the Devil who came and stood before the High Priest and accused him:

"Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord will rebuke you, Satan! The Lord Who has chosen Jerusalem will rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel.Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him He said, “Behold, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.” And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by."

Here we have one sacred Person talking to another sacred person, stating that He will be humiliating the Devil. A person who vilifies another person and receives rebuke from the Lord cannot possibly be anything else except a person.

How dark is the form of Satan...darker than pitch... darker than Hades... But, dark as Satan's form may be, far more luminous is the teaching about Satan in the Bible - as luminous as the sun. In the New Testament you can clearly see that Satan is a person.  My beloved, remember how the Lord was tested by Satan in the New Testament - because Satan is so audacious and brazen, that he dared to test Christ Himself!

During His Baptism in the Jordan, Christ was publicly proclaimed as the beloved Son of God: "A voice was heard saying 'This is My beloved Son'..."  That voice was also heard by Satan, and it disturbed him....

After His Baptism, the Holy Spirit took up Christ (as a human, not as God of course, because Christ was also an enfleshed Man) and led Him to the desert of Judea so that He would be tested by the Devil.  Just as all of us ordinary humans are tested by the Devil, likewise Christ had to be tested by the Devil as a human, in order to prevail and to eventually thoroughly humiliate the Devil.

Jesus tested three times by the Devil

Christ had fasted in that desert for 40 days, after which, He became hungry. The Devil saw this as an opportunity to test Christ during His moment of hunger, so he approached Him and said "If you are indeed the son of God - as we heard during your baptism - then command these stones to become loaves of bread" .

Christ replied: "It is written, that man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God"... (Matth.4:3-4)..  Christ rebuked the Devil with these wonderful words from the Holy Bible.

Satan didn't give up. He again took up Christ and led Him to the holy city, where he placed Him atop a ledge of the Temple and said "If you are the Son of God, then jump off this ledge, for it is said in Scripture that you will not be harmed, because God will give a command to his angels and they will lift you in their arms so that your foot won't trip over any stone"  .

What did Christ say to this? "Devil, again it is written to not test the Lord;  there is no need to fall from here, for I would be testing God!" (Matth.4:5-7)  (Implying that the crowds standing in the courtyard of the Temple below would witness this miracle and then believe in God, while Christ would also be convinced of God's love and protection)...

For one more time the Devil did not give up, but took Christ for a third time and led Him to the top of a high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms and authorities of the world, reminding Him that all these were given to the Devil and that "if You fall down and worship me, I will give you all the kingdoms of the earth, as they have been given to me and I can give them to whomever I desire" (Matth.4:8-9)  But the Devil  owned nothing - nothing had been handed over to him! - He was trying to make Christ his Messiah, so that through Christ, he would acquire authority over all the world in his hellish name! Imagine the brazenness of the Devil - asking Christ to venerate and worship him as a god! Then Christ said to him: "Get thee behind Me, Satan, for it is written, that you shall venerate only God your Lord, and worship only Him!"  (Matth.4:10) After this, the devil departed from Christ, and Angels came to minister to Him. (Matth.4:11)

Satan departed after this, and withdrew "for a time". He again waited before reappearing, and he did reappear - after about three years - during the time of the Crucifixion. He hadn't dared to reappear in the meantime before then...

If a being that can speak and can reference the Holy Bible and knows and uses the Scriptural texts is NOT a person with a mind (a nous - albeit a perverted nous), then what is it?

Related Article: Reflections on the narration regarding the demonically possessed Gadarenes

Let's recall today's Gospel reading:  Christ had gone to the land of the Gadarenes, where an unfortunate man who had caught sight of Him from a distance let out a great cry: "What is there between me and You, Jesus - Son of the Most High God? Do not torment me!"  Now, the demon-possessed man wasn't acquainted with Christ; he didn't personally know Christ - neither as the Son of God nor as Jesus the Nazarene - and yet, we hear him crying out "what business is there between You and me, Christ? You are the Son of God!" - clearly indicating that those two opposites (You and me) were uttered by the Devil - through that man!  The one who was inside the demon-possessed man was the chief of demons - their captain - who knew Christ; he not only knew that Christ came from Nazareth, but also that Christ is the Son of the Most High God - the only-begotten and beloved Son of God, of the same nature and essence of God the Father! 

Where are all the anti-Christian Chiliasts, who don't confess Christ's divine status?  The demons prove to be superior to them as regards this confession - making themselves even worse than the demons...

Referring back to the case of the Gadarenes of today's sermon (Mark 5:1-13), we also notice that the demons lodged inside the possessed man had pleaded with Christ to not torture them.... All of those demons - an entire legion of them, as they told Christ when He asked for their name (a Legion in military terms normally consists of six thousand individuals) - all those demons beseeched Christ: "Send us to those pigs (there was a large herd grazing nearby) so that we might enter them"  (Mark 5:12)

Now, when we read of beings that recognize who Christ is, and also know that Hades/Hell exists, and that plead with Him to not send them there to be tortured, cannot be anything but persons.

Christ, Who had said the most serious, the most significant words on the eve of His Death - just a few hours prior to His Death - also mentioned the Devil: "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the master of this world be cast out." (John 12:31).  Christ was hinting at what was to come: that with Him on the Cross, the world will soon be judged; those who become scandalized and depart are the unbelievers; those who remain are the faithful... Now will the world be judged, with My Cross; and the master of the world (the Devil) thrown out of his realm, out of his kingdom...

Did you notice how Christ referred to him?  "Master of the world"... "Prince of the world"... "cosmocrator" as the Apostle Paul names him... He has all the titles and authorities in his hands -so to speak- and if you kneel before him and worship him the way that Masons do, he distributes ranks, titles, thrones, grandeurs and human glories...

"The master of this world is coming, and he has nothing to hold against Me" , Christ had said. "Behold... the master of this world is coming... he is near, but he can't accuse Me of a single thing... he can find nothing guilty in Me. However, the master of this world has now been judged and has been condemned.

The way that Christ spoke about the Devil again reveals that the Devil is a person... the darkest and most sinister person in the world...

My brethren, I would be amiss if today - the important feast day of Saint Jacob (James), the Godbrother of Christ and major Apostle, the first Bishop of the Church in Jerusalem, Mother of the Churches, and Chairman of the Apostolic Council and a pillar of the Church - if today we weren't reminded of a very outstanding verse, which beyond every doubt states that demons are personal beings.

What does Saint Jacob/James say in the second chapter of his Epistle? "You believe that there is one God: you do well. Demons also believe and they tremble".  (James 2:19)  So, you believe only one God exists (says James), and you are right to believe so.  But you aren't doing something. Faith alone doesn't save you... because demons also believe that God exists, and they tremble - but they aren't saved! Faith is not enough... works are necessary also. Can you see what the Apostle is saying here?  That demons BELIEVE, and that they TREMBLE - ergo, they are persons.  A wall doesn't believe. Trees don't believe. Electricity doesn't believe. But demons believe. Which means they have a nous (mind) that is able to believe - and they tremble, because they can feel emotions - a perverted nous and perverted emotions. Nevertheless, they believe, and they tremble in the presence of the grandeur of Divinity.

All those who admit they believe the Holy Bible we direct them to the Old and the New Testaments.  All those who don't believe in the Holy Bible, we direct them - my brethren - to the Devil himself.  (Not that we are telling them to "go to the Devil". Why would we do that?  After all, since they are unbelievers, they went there on their own, a long time ago)... So, we would direct them to the demonic displays that take place, so they can be convinced that demons do indeed exist.

There are displays that cannot be explained naturally - only supernaturally. Those displays include phenomena that are called demon possession, spiritualism, and sorcery. Awesome and terrible phenomena.

Demon possession:  Cases of demon possession didn't exist only in Christ's time. Demon possessed instances exist in every era - instances with very evident the presence of Satan inside them.  Let me mention some examples. There are cases of demon possessed people who have supernatural muscular strength: they may be tied with chains, and yet they break them easily, as if they are made of threads. There are cases of demon possessed people who with a single leap can span 10 or 20 metres. There are cases of demon possessed people who can jump into a fire and don't get burned; they even dance in the flames. This can be seen in India, where sorcery is rampant; but even in Greece, in two villages in the north, there are the (in)famous Anastenaria*  - which are disgracefully advertised by the Godless Press as worship of God !!!

* Anastenaria is the name of an older "religious" tradition preserved over the years by a group of "faithful" who prepare themselves in advance with prayers to Saints, then go to the place where coals have been set alight and they proceed to walk back and forth on those burning coals - holding Orthodox icons in their hands - who however remain unharmed by the fire. This practice has been banned by the Orthodox Church...

There are other cases of demon possessed people who, on seeing you - albeit never having seen each other before - will address you by your name, will give you the names of your parents, your wife, children, siblings, your profession, where you come from etc... If you have never bothered with the Sacrament of Confession of your sins, the demon will recite all your sins and make them public... they will talk to you about political and religious personalities, about ecclesiastic problems etc., When the demonic influence subsides, those people have no idea of what had just transpired... 

They might tell you to hold a book in your hands with pages opened, and then the demon possessed person standing at a distance without looking will recite the entire Gospel of Matthew or John - or the Divine Liturgy - without a single mistake.

There was once a case where a demon possessed individual on board a ship was reciting the Divine Liturgy. After finishing the Divine Liturgy, he slithered up to the top of the ship's main mast like a snake, and shouted out "Do you know who I am? I am the one who 3000 years ago prompted King David to commit a sin."

Cases like those can tell you what is going on that very moment in London, what is happening in New York... they can look at their watch and say "at this very moment, a fire has broken out in such and such a place, and there is such and such a number of fire engines and firemen now there, to put out the fire - and one fireman was burned to death in the fire...". The next day you hear on the news those exact details regarding the fire and the outcome...

In a split second, the spirit goes to London, sees what is happening there, returns inside its victim and conveys that information to them...

An illiterate villager - there are cases like this also - became demon possessed. He could barely pronounce the name of his village correctly; but as soon as he became possessed, he was able to speak in English, Russian, Hebrew... in various languages of the world, and extremely eloquently!

There are also various kinds of spiritualism In the world - also in the sinful capital and other towns of our country, where several thousands of people spend their nights bent over the tables of spiritualists... they can hear voices, cries, sounds, knocks, people being beaten, they see dishes hovering in mid-air above the tables.... They have a Ouija board on the table with letters and numbers inscribed on it and by means of which those 'customers' ask to communicate with -say- their dead grandfather.  Those spiritualists claim to be able to contact the spirits of the deceased. WRONG! They communicate with demons! They begin saying some special words, and the Ouija board begins to 'show' them an answer by means of aligning the letters on it, and indicating that it is the recently deceased grandfather who is replying... and even giving specific information about the family and events... they may even see a phantom who has the exact appearance of that grandfather - thanks to the Forger, who has forged the phantom into the appearance of the grandfather, thus intensifying their belief in spiritualism...

But, should someone send a priest to such a seance, and he places a Crucifix on the table and recites a few words, then all hell breaks loose and the demons try to find a place to hide... that is the reason spiritualists don't accept priests at their establishment during their spiritual synaxes!

We have cases of people who are involved in the art of sorcery. Not that all those who claim to be actual sorcerers are real sorcerers. Real ones do exist - who in the middle of the night... Satan's hour... climb up on trees... formidable witches... who invoke unclean spirits and command them to send evils and calamities to individuals and to families who are far from God... There are families who have been obliterated by sorcery, because they didn't believe in God! They never went to Church, they never prayed during Sacraments, they never took God into account, and didn't believe anything!

Our Church has special prayers and exorcisms against sorcery. My brethren, I am speaking responsibly, and not the way that certain fanciful individuals speak - or certain hysterical or sickly individuals... No! I am talking responsibly. Being a theologian, I have researched responsibly, checked certain things, not by just reading books that have been written on such topics as spiritualism, but have personally researched these matters seriously and in depth and I am telling you responsibly, that Satan exists! He is alive and active!

And in case you don't want to believe a theolgian, then believe Sciencel because Science is aware of these phenomena - demonic, spiritualistic, and witchcraft - and has classified them in a particular chapter in Philosophy, in Psychology and in Pedagogy and has named them Parapsychological-Paranormal Phenomena, stating "These things do actually take place, however, Science is not the competent area of expertise that can give explanations, and therefore the interpretation of these phenomena belongs only to religion."

It is therefore proven by both the Bible and by Satan himself that demons exist as personal beings. You may ask what the benefit is, by knowing that Satan exists; well the benefit is plenty and huge, my brethren... because those who don't believe in the existence of Satan, makes God a liar. When God Himself says that Satan exists, and you claim that he doesn't, you are making God to be a liar, and you are malignant and irreverent!  Those who don't believe in Satan, don't believe in God either. We either believe everything that God tells us, or we don't believe anything!

In the matter of Faith, you can't be selective and say "I believe only this and that" and "I only like this and that",,,  No!  It is either the truth, or it is a lie!  Not half truth and half lie!  God is truth and all people are liars.

What is the benefit of proving that Satan exists? Huge, because we know we have an enemy - a huge enemy - the greatest ever enemy - and ourselves first of all, with our abysmal vices, our corruption, but still, inside our old self we still have a niche with kindness - a niche with the inclination towards something grand, something beautiful, something true... It is not our self that is evil.  The world is evil, but even so, there too are niches of virtues and kindness; even in the worst criminal, inside him too is a niche of kindness. There is one, however, who has no such niche of kindness in him but instead is full of vengeance and hatred and darkness and chaos: it is Satan.  He is our worst enemy.

When we believe he exists, we tremble for our salvation. We are greatly benefited by acknowledging that he is a huge enemy, because then we will hasten more fervently to the more powerful One: to Christ, Who rebukes, subjugates, and crushes Satan, and ask Him to help us crush Satan underfoot, and take us into His heavenly Realm. Amen.

N. Sotiropoulos  (1934-2014)

Translation:  K.N.